What Is the Definition of a Project?
For people without project management experience, this is a commonly asked question. What is a project?
A project consists of three essential components.
Firstly, a project is set up to accomplish certain things. For example an advertising campaign might be set up to achieve great product awareness in the market place. Building your house extension can be viewed as a project which aims to accomplish that extra bedroom you always wanted. We say therefore that a project is comprised of having scope.
Secondly, to accomplish this project scope, a project needs resources. Resources can be anything from people, equipment, computer software, office space, transport etc. Resources are all of these things that are required in order to accomplish the project scope. These resources will cost something - wages and salaries, hire costs, rent etc.
So, the second aspect to any project is that it costs resources (i.e. money) and therefore requires a budget which is a certain amount of money set aside especially to pay for all of the activities on the project.
Thirdly, to accomplish the scope using the resources which costs money and requires a budget, any project will last for a finite amount of time. Projects are never indefinite activities. As soon as the project scope has been achieved, then the project has served its purpose and can be closed down. We say therefore that a project has a start and end date i.e. a schedule.
So, the three essential components of any project are: scope, cost and schedule.
If any set of activities comprise these three elements, then those activities are likely to be part of a project.
To get a better understanding of what is a project, why not attend an introductory project management course which will teach you all you need to know about planning and managing projects. They take place in London, UK.
